New gardens director with a feeling for useful plants

Anders Backlund defended his doctoral thesis in systematic botany when the Department of Systematic Botany was still housed in the Botanical Garden. He has been teaching biologists, pharmacists and dispensers here for more than three decades with 10% of his working hours remaining with the research group in pharmacognosy, mainly to maintain the contact with his teaching.

“Being able to tie teaching and research even closer to the gardens’ activities. That’s what I see as the main advantage of my new position as gardens director. In general, there will be more medicinal plants in the gardens. For the area sometimes called the ‘vegetable garden’, we’ll be returning to the old name, because it’s not just about vegetables, but also other useful plants,” he says.

The collections will also be made even more relevant to teaching. Anders Backlund also wants the gardens to build more on their connection with research.

“The gardens are amazing places. Interesting as heritage, beautiful environments, wonderful plants. Many people don’t realise that it’s actually a living collection we have here; it’s easy to forget about the scientific side.

The gardens have functioned as a research and teaching infrastructure ever since 1655, when the Linnaeus Gardens were built by Olof Rudbeck to train doctors.

“Students of the Master of Science Programme in Pharmacy still come here during the course in pharmacognosy and collect plants that they then work with to investigate their antibacterial effects, for statistics, etc.”

Important to preserve the heritage environments

Uppsala University doesn’t have the largest botanical garden in Sweden, but it was the first, and internationally it’s one of the most important according to Anders Backlund. In total, there are almost 9,000 accessions in the gardens. In museum language, accession means the formal commitment of the organisation to manage and care for an object, in this case a plant, over the long term.

“It is given a number and is catalogued, much like a book in a library. We also cooperate with Gustavianum, which is responsible for many objects inside our buildings, both here and at the Linnaeus Museum and out at Linnaeus’s Hammarby,” he says.

For many years, the Botanical Garden has played host to big events and concerts. The TV program Antikrundan (the Swedish incarnation of the popular BBC series Antiques Roadshow) recorded a very popular episode from the Baroque Garden in summer 2024. The Linnaean Gardens of Uppsala are also open to future requests of this kind, as the gardens are highly suitable for this purpose, according to Anders Backlund. But are there any risks involved in using the gardens for big events?

“The important thing is to preserve the heritage environments, the buildings and the layout of the gardens, and of course that the collections are not damaged. But the bigger events that have taken place in the gardens so far have worked very well. Some parts of the gardens are closed off, and staff are on site of course,” he says.

Music in the Garden is happening again this year, and requests have been received to host pétanque competitions, for example.

“It’s really fantastic that the area can be utilised. A lot of resources go to keeping the gravel open areas and lawns in good condition. The Linnaean Gardens are among Uppsala’s biggest attractions and in recent years we have had around 400,000 visitors per year.”

Challenges and exciting development opportunities

Anders Backlund says that many of the major challenges that have existed in the past have concerned the buildings.

“Most of this work has already been completed thanks to fabulous cooperation with the National Property Board of Sweden, which owns the buildings and the gardens. Many of the buildings are listed as historical monuments, and even the entire Baroque Garden is protected. Linneanum was originally built to house the living collections in the winter and the Linnaeus Room was the first sizeable lecture room at the University, where we still have some exhibitions today,” says Anders.

It was King Gustav III, when he donated the Baroque Garden to the University in 1787, who decided that it should be preserved in the same condition as at the time of the donation.

“You really still get the feeling that it is part of the old castle garden. The planning also includes trying to have the right plants in the right place. And as far as possible, with the same genetic origin as then. But there are also a lot of really exciting things to develop and present to be accessible both to the public and in particular relevant to teaching,” he says.

The seasons create favourite spots

Spring is the main time of the year for plants to sprout. When asked if Anders Backlund has a personal favourite among all the glorious spots in the gardens, maybe a little oasis that he returns to, he highlights both the new and the old. During the colder half-year, the tropical greenhouse is naturally an attractive place to be in the gardens.

“We actually sat in there and had employee dialogues this morning. That’s pretty cool to be able to do. There are many particularly pleasant corners in the gardens and these also vary with the seasons. In the spring it is so great to see all the bulbs poking their heads up everywhere in the stony sections and in the flower beds around Linneanum. On really hot summer days, it’s wonderful to be able to go into the conifer collection, where it’s so cool and airy and the canopy is so high. One of the oldest known medicinal plants, Ephedra, grows under the larch tree. Ephedra can be used to extract ephedrine, which has been used in Chinese medicine for more than 5,000 years,” says Anders.

Johan Ahlenius